Here’s the thing. Sepphoris indeed became a Roman-style city when Antipas rebuilt it, but its population continued to be Jewish. It would be a mistake to think that Romans were always patrolling the streets or pillaging from towns and villages, or that Palestine was ‘Romanized’. To the contrary, they actually allowed local officials to govern themselves and for the most part practice their own customs as long as they behaved. I recommend E.P. ‘Ed’ Sanders’ paper
Jesus in Historical Context.
Galilee in Jesus’ Day: When Herod died, one of his ablest sons, Antipas, inherited Galilee-home of Nazareth, where Jesus lived. Jesus was perhaps two or three years old when Antipas came to power. Antipas was not king, but had a lesser title: tetrarch, “ruler of a fourth,” that is, a fourth of Herod’s kingdom. Antipas ruled on the same four terms and conditions as his father, meeting them all, except for a little slip, which I shall explain below. Therefore, Rome left him alone. Rome did not send officials to govern Galilee, nor did Roman troops occupy Galilee.
People who imagine that, in the Roman empire, Romans actually governed and policed every substantial city, that Roman or Greek bureaucrats kept good Roman records, and that Roman magistrates enforced Roman law, have not only failed to read Roman imperial history, they have failed to contemplate the question of numbers. There were not enough able Romans to spread around in such a prodigious way. And, besides, why should they exercise such heavy supervision? All they really wanted from a place like Palestine was loyalty and secure borders. They wanted to Romanize Gaul-modern France-and they did so to a considerable degree, but they had no such ambition in Palestine. New Testament scholars and others frequently attribute to the Romans of Jesus’ day the objectives that Hadrian, a hundred years later, may have had: to homogenize the empire and to make it all Greco-Roman in culture.40 It is, however, an error to attribute this ambition to Julius Caesar, Augustus, or Tiberius.
Herod’s heir, Antipas, also lacked the desire to change the entire culture of his domain. In matters that touched the populace as a whole, he observed the Jewish law. He did not put his face, or that of Augustus, or later that of Tiberius on his coins.41 He did not build
gymnasia; there were no Greek schools. He may have built a theater in his first capital city, Sepphoris,42 and possibly in his second capital, Tiberias. There was no reason not to do so, since his father had built a theater near Jerusalem. But the populace of both cities was Jewish. Sepphoris was a Jewish city of long standing,43 and there is no indication whatsoever that Antipas offered bribes to gentiles in and around Palestine to move to Sepphoris, though he doubtless used some gentiles in the way his father had. Even the city of Tiberias, named in honor of the new emperor, which Antipas built from the ground up, was settled mostly by Jews. Since part of it was over a cemetery and since Jews tended to avoid corpse impurity, Antipas had to force high ranking Jews to move there, and he attracted others by various devices (
Antiq. 18.36-8). Corpse impurity was not a problem for gentiles, and, had gentiles been his preferred settlers, he would not have needed special exertions to populate his new capital. Tiberias was predominantly Jewish at the time of the great Jewish revolt against Rome, which erupted in the year 66.44
